pi Desktop
A desktop app for the pi coding agent.
The same agent and the same ~/.pi/agent you use in the terminal — with a timeline, Git review, a built-in terminal, and an Android app to keep going from your phone.
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pi Desktop is not another agent. It runs the pi SDK in a background worker and reads the same files as the CLI — sessions, model logins, settings.json, installed extensions. Open a project and the sessions you started in the terminal are already in the sidebar; continue any of them, or start a new one.
At a glance
One turn, start to finish
Recorded from the app itself. The model replies come from a scripted local endpoint so the demo is reproducible; the bash, read and edit tools ran for real on the sample repo.
Timeline
Tool calls stream in as flat steps — thinking, commands, reads, edits — and fold into one summary line once the answer starts. Each edit shows +N −M; the turn ends with a Files changed card that opens the file in Files or Review.
Markdown, code blocks, KaTeX and long outputs render in place. Hover a message to copy it, rewind to it, or fork a new session from it.
Review
Pick a scope — this turn, this session, or the whole Git working tree — and expand a file for its diff; drag the sidebar wider for a side-by-side view. Hunks can be staged or unstaged one at a time, and a line comment goes straight back into the conversation.
Files
- Browse the project next to the chat;
Ctrl/⌘+click opens a file in another tab. - The gutter button quotes
path:lineinto the composer as a reference. - Expand preview gives the file the whole chat column; click again to go back. Drag a file onto the composer to attach it.
Composer
@searches project files (respects.gitignore, usesfd) and inserts them as references./lists pi's built-in commands and the ones your extensions register.- Paste or drop images and files; model and thinking level sit at the right of the input.
- While the agent is working,
Entersteers the current turn andAlt+Enterqueues a follow-up for when it finishes.
Parallel sessions
Each session runs in its own worker. Start a turn, open another session and start a second one: both keep going, the sidebar marks the ones that are working and the status bar counts them. Settings → General sets how many workers stay alive and when idle ones are reclaimed; running sessions are never reclaimed.
Built-in terminal
Ctrl+` pulls a terminal up from under the chat, in the current project. It starts the same shell pi runs commands in (Git Bash on Windows) with pi's tools on PATH; + also offers PowerShell 7, Windows PowerShell, cmd, each WSL distribution, zsh or fish. Tabs and up to four side-by-side panes per tab — drag the borders, close one pane with its ✕ or Ctrl+Shift+W. Hiding the drawer keeps the shells and their output; selected output goes into the composer with one click.
Branches
The status bar shows the project's branch, uncommitted changes and ahead / behind. Click it (or Switch branch… in the command palette) to search local and remote branches, switch, or create one from HEAD. Changes travel with the switch when Git allows it; when they would be overwritten you can stash them first, and they are offered back when you return to the branch. If a session is still working in the project you are asked before anything changes under it.
Usage
Settings → Usage adds up tokens and cost from every pi session on the machine — the desktop's and terminal pi's, including a custom sessionDir — by day, hour, model, project and session. Hover a layer of a day for its share; replies copied into a fork count once.
More panels
| Panel | What it does |
|---|---|
| Tree | The session as a tree, like pi /tree: filter to user messages, jump back to any node and continue from there as a new branch. |
| Run | Run state, model and thinking level, and how the context window splits between user, assistant and tool messages. |
| Context | The messages that make up the current context, with token estimates per entry. |
Themes and background
Light and dark each take a preset — Claude, VS Code Light+, Codex Dark — or your own: colours for the sidebar, chat, your messages, code blocks and borders, a heading / reply font (serif included), chat text size and line height, corner radius and shadow. Everything is a CSS variable, listed next to the custom CSS editor. A background image can sit behind the window — per mode or shared, with its strength, blur and the panes' opacity adjustable; text always stays on a frosted surface. Themes import from pi-theme-v1 / codex-theme-v1 strings; five icon sets and 90–110% density are in Settings → Appearance too.
pi on your phone
pi Remote (Android) connects to the desktop app: turn on Settings → Mobile, scan the QR code, and every session is on the phone — read along while a turn runs, answer its questions, send prompts with images, pick the model and thinking level. Review a turn's changes or the working tree file by file, long-press lines to leave comments that go into your next message, switch the session's branch or fork from any message. The connection is end-to-end encrypted and stays on your network; away from home, put both devices in the same Tailscale / ZeroTier / WireGuard network (the app finds the overlay address, or add one by hand). English and Chinese follow the phone's language, with an in-app override.
How it fits together
The renderer never talks to the SDK directly: the main process routes each request to the worker that owns the session, and that worker runs the pi SDK on your machine or inside a WSL distribution. Sessions, logins and settings stay in ~/.pi/agent, so the CLI and the app can take turns on the same session.